Tag Archives: Indianapolis Colts

The Indianapolis Colts square off against the New England Patriots this Sunday in the AFC Championship with the winner earning the opportunity to play for the ultimate prize: the Super Bowl.

The road to being crowned champion of the world is filled with various obstacles – injuries, poor officiating, roster moves and, of course, the opponent.

The New England Patriots rampaged through the second part of the season to a 12-4 regular season weapon and are the pundits’ consensus to take home the Lombardi Trophy. Their record has given them the right to home-field advantage throughout the playoffs, providing them with a critical edge.

Home field is so important in sports like football because there is a great deal of communication that goes on during any game with coaches trying to talk to their quarterbacks who then have to relay the message to the 10 other players on the field.

The same goes on the other side of the ball, where defenders need to tell each other which spots to be in and what the offense is trying to do to them. If they fail, it’s going to be a long day ahead. In the playoffs, every play can be the difference between you going on vacation next week or to continue vying for the sport’s ultimate prize.

Klipsch brand ambassador Andrew Luck will have to deal with a hostile crowd in Foxboro that will do everything it can to prevent the former Stanford quarterback from reaching his first Super Bowl. All 60,000+ fans will scream, chant and shout all sorts of things when Luck tries to call out a plays to his teammates on top of the already impressive noise floor that is attached to any large-scale event.

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It’s a hard to mimic that sort of crowd noise. You can’t just round up the interns and have them yell simultaneously.

Prior to the 2013 season, the Colts came to Klipsch with the goal of creating a speaker environment that could mimic any of their opponents’ home fields. The team has both indoor and outdoor facilities to prepare for the environment of their upcoming game, which makes sense seeing as how the team will face off versus teams who play in dome and those who battle beneath the sun.

To deliver a similar sound experience and replicate crowd noise for the outdoor fields, Klipsch engineered three custom, portable systems that can be cart-mounted and positioned around the relevant field. These systems were first-of-their-kind and each feature an array of four professional audio Tractrix horns. Klipsch’s renowned Tractrix horn systems allow the Colts to create powerful and detailed sound in a sprawling outdoor space.

“Sound is a major component of our daily practice routines,” said Pete Ward, chief operating officer with the Indianapolis Colts. “Klipsch loudspeakers work really well for us because they are highly efficient and deliver a very clean sound even at the high-volume levels we require. We’re thankful to our proud sponsor for a new setup that delivers a sound experience like nothing we’ve ever had before. ”

The sounds of a football stadium are unmistakable on gamedays. The booming PA, the barking vendors, the crunching tackles and cheers and groans from the thousands of spectators.

Take a step back and you realize that playing professional football is just as mental as it is physical. The endless strings of coaches on the sideline aren’t there as models for their fancy logo’d windbreakers.

The scheming, diagnosing and planning involved in each game is a monumental team effort that goes into effect as soon as the previous game of the effort.

When the Indianapolis Colts are on the road, the team has one final preparatory session the night before they take the field. Fifty-three players ranging from 190 to 350 pounds and their coaches gather in one of the hotel’s oversized meeting rooms

It’s there where the Colts video crew plays a montage motivational highlights for the team. The goal is to fire them up and lock them in to the task ahead of them.

To sufficiently fire up over 50 grown men in an extremely large room, the Colts needed a speaker that they can rock the house AND be portable enough to bring on the road.

The Colts first tried out the Klipsch KMC 3 portable speaker, but the team wanted something even louder. Just like what they expect out of the players on the field, they wanted the best. They needed the Klipsch STADIUM.

With over 400 watts of peak system power and state-of-the-art Tractrix® Horns, the Klipsch STADIUM delivers the power, detail and emotion the team needs.

“These speakers sounded amazing especially in the large meeting rooms at the hotel. The sound was rich, full and the bass pounded even in the back of the room. The players commented that the sound was AWESOME,” said Colts video director Erik Kunttu.

This final film session with the team is highly secretive. In fact, it is so secretive that photos are not allowed.

All of this preparation culminates on Sundays, where Klipsch brand ambassador Andrew Luck (and next season, Robert Mathis) put all their knowledge to the test.